


There Goes My Life

by danrdarrenc



Category: Days of Our Lives
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 18:14:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2238621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danrdarrenc/pseuds/danrdarrenc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will watches as his little girl, Arianna Grace, grows up. Sort of a companion fic to "A Red River of Screams".</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Goes My Life

When Gabi tells him she’s pregnant with his child, Will feels like the world is crashing around him. He’s not even twenty and he’s just started his life with Sonny. 

He remembers how difficult it was for his mother when she had him, having to raise him when she was still a child herself, and now he’s made the same mistake, has to do the same thing.

As he sits on the bench on the edge of Horton Town Square, Will wonders if he’ll make the same mistakes she did, if he’ll constantly let down his child, put himself first instead of the him or her.

The thoughts paralyze him with fear.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The day his daughter is born Will is completely overwhelmed.

He’s still a little out of it from the events on Smith Island when he sees Nick standing at his bed, the baby in his arms, but he quickly snaps himself into complete consciousness as his mind fills with extreme joy.

He immediately asks to hold her, though, and can’t stop smiling when NIck lowers her into his arms. The second she’s completely cradled in his arms, Will’s heart soars with love.

As he falls asleep later that night, Will smiles contentedly at the image still in his mind of little Arianna Grace resting peacefully in Sonny’s arms. And when he slips into his dreams, Will realizes just how much his life and the plans he had for his and Sonny’s future have changed in the last few hours.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

By the time Arianna Grace is six months old, Will is sure he won’t be able to do this for even another week. He’s tired of changing diapers and warming milk in bottles, sick of tasting baby food in his vain attempts to get her to eat, and thoroughly exhausted from being up all night with her (she absolutely refuses to sleep when he and Sonny want to sleep). To top it off, he’s almost certain Sonny is having second thoughts about committing to this life with him.

But Sonny stands by him and helps him through, lets him sleep, rocks the baby back to sleep every night she wakes up for the next two months. And by the time Arianna’s first birthday rolls around, dozens of photos of her and them with her plastering the refrigerator doors, Will feels confident he made the right decision in agreeing to take Arianna full-time when Gabi went to Argentina to live with Dario, Salem apparently holding too much pain and too many memories for her that even her daughter couldn’t overcome.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Arianna Grace is five when the enormity of what she means to him hits Will like a ton of bricks. 

The TV is playing quietly and she’s babbling excitedly to him and Sonny about how excited she is to start preschool in the morning, her little legs hanging off the edge of the couch and swinging back and forth. Will bites his lip to keep from smiling too wide and he feels Sonny laughing silently next to him.

When she pauses for a breath, Will cuts in and says, “Alright, little lady, time for bed if you want to be awake for school tomorrow.”

"I’m not - I’m not - I’m not tired, Daddy!" Ari insists through her yawn and hugs her teddy bear to her chest.

Sonny chuckles and gets off the couch. “Let’s go, Princess. Bedtime.”

She pouts momentarily but hops off the couch and follows Sonny out of the room.

Will follows slowly and watches her trip her way up the stairs, her black curls bouncing on her back. Suddenly, she turns her head around, sees Will standing at the foot of the stairs, and runs back down them to him.

Will swoops her up in his arms and she hugs him tightly around his neck as she whispers, “I love you, Daddy. Good night.” in his ear. Then she slips back onto the stairs and fumbles up to the top where Sonny waits for her.

As he makes his way up the stairs to sounds of Sonny reading their daughter a bedtime story, Will nearly cries with happiness about the life he never quite imagined for himself, but which he’s glad he has.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Over the next few years, Will enrolls Arianna Grace in every activity from dance lessons to softball teams to Girl Scouts. Both Sonny and his mother advise him against it, saying that he’ll get worn too thin trying to shuttle her around in addition to finishing his own school and that she likely won’t like them all. But she puts up with it all like a trooper and by the time she’s ten, she’s received multiple awards in ballet, tap, and jazz, and been named MVP of her softball team two years in a row.

As he sits at the annual end-of-summer team picnic, Will stares proudly at Ari’s third MVP award, as well as three other trophies she’s been granted by the coach, but wonders where in the hell he’s going to put them (there’s absolutely no more room in the cabinet with her other ones).

Sonny sits down next to him with a plate of food, kisses his cheek, and chuckles because he knows exactly what’s going on in Will’s head.

"We’re going to need three more trophy cabinets by the time she’s twenty," Sonny says cheekily.

Will laughs loudly and nods in agreement.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

When Arianna Grace comes home in tears one day halfway through high school, Will worries. He constantly worries that she’s being bullied, or that the kids laugh at her for having two dads, but he never really actively thinks about those worries until he sees her facedown on her bed sobbing loudly.

He sits down gently on her bed and it takes ten minutes until he can coax out of her that her boyfriend broke up with her. While it doesn’t worry him that it’s happened - it’s practically a rite of passage, especially in Salem - it makes him nervous because he has no idea what to do.

He’s never really experienced heartbreak before (Sonny was the first person he ever truly loved and he doesn’t generally consider the month they were apart after the baby secret came out as a true heartbreak) and even if he had, he still wouldn’t know what to tell her to make it better.

So he pulls her into his arms and cradles her like he used to when she was a baby, rocks her back and forth, lets her cry into his chest. When she’s quieted down and only sniffles, Will pulls back a little and cups her face in his hands.

"I know it hurts now, baby, but it’ll get easier. I promise."

"Do mind if I skip dinner tonight?" she asks, her blue eyes still watery.

"Not at all. Come downstairs if you get hungry, okay?"

She nods and he stands up. He kisses the top of her head and is at the door when Arianna says, “Daddy?”

Will turns around.

"I love you."

"I love you, too, little lady."

She smiles at the old, familiar nickname and crawls under her covers as Will shuts the door behind him.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

As he and Sonny stand in the driveway of their home, Arianna Grace’s car loaded with suitcases, bins, and everything she needs for college, Will wonders how she’s eighteen already and heading out to California on her own. 

He remembers Nick handing her to him as if it was yesterday and he remembers all the sleepless nights and diapers of the first two years of her life as if he was only now just getting a good night’s sleep.

He can picture hanging up and putting away all the certificates and trophies she’s won, now in boxes in their basement, and sticking her little kid paintings to the fridge. 

Sonny squeezes his hand as Ari slams the trunk closed for a final time and walks over to them and Will snaps out of his reverie.

"Are you sure you have everything?" Will asks, though he knows the answer is yes. He’s just putting off the inevitable of saying goodbye.

"Yes, Daddy." She smiles at him, knows he’s stalling, and only barely keeps a laugh at bay.

"You have all your clothes? Your books? Your school supplies? Toothbrush? Toothpaste? Hairbrush?" Will starts listing off until Arianna Grace takes his face in her hands. 

"Daddy, I have everything I need. I promise. And, yes, I will call you every day."

Sonny chuckles softly next to him.

Will swallows thickly but smiles. “Okay. I can take a hint.”

She laughs and stands on her tiptoes to wrap her arms around his neck and hug him tightly. Will whimpers quietly, as an image of a five-year old Arianna Grace hugging him the same way, her teddy bear squashed between them, pops into his head. “I love you so much, Daddy.”

"I love you, too, little lady," Will whispers and squeezes her.

After she pulls away, Arianna hugs Sonny tightly and says, “I love you so much, too, Papa.”

"I love you, too, Princess," Sonny answers and huggs her just as tightly as Will had.

Will knows watching her go off on her own to college is just as hard for Sonny as it is for him - he had been the first one to hold her when she came into the world, after all.

After a couple minutes in which the three of them each resolutely determines not to cry, Arianna Grace slips into her car and pulls out of the driveway, Will and Sonny staring after her with bittersweet joy.


End file.
